Raul Castro announces retirement

HAVANA:Raul Castro has accepted a new five-year term and says it will be his last as Cuba's president, for the first time putting a date on the end of the Castro era.

He tapped rising star Miguel Diaz-Canel as his top lieutenant and first in the line of succession.

The 81-year-old Castro also said on Sunday he hopes to establish two-term limits and age caps for political offices including the presidency - an astonishing prospect for a nation led by Castro or his older brother Fidel since the 1959 revolution.

Retired Cuban leader Castro made a rare public appearance on Sunday as he took his long-empty seat beside brother Raul Castro at the opening session of the National Assembly, the official National Information Agency reported. Photo: Reuters

Some constitutional changes are to be so dramatic that they will have to be ratified by the Cuban people in a public referendum, he said, though he added he was not named president in order to destroy Cuba's socialist system.

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Cuba is at a moment of "historic transcendence", Mr Castro told lawmakers in speaking of his decision to name Diaz-Canel to the No. 2 job.

"It represents a definitive step in the configuration of the future leadership of the nation through the gradual transfer ... of key roles to new generations."

"This will be my last term," he said. Mr Castro's term will end in 2018.

The 52-year-old Diaz-Canel is now a heartbeat from the presidency and has risen higher than any other Cuban official who didn't directly participate in the 1959 Cuban revolution.